A Hand Turned Wooden Urn
Having lost a lot of very close family members at a very young age, I have dealt with loss for a huge portion of my life. John knew that I often “felt” the presence of someone who had died and even “heard” brief messages from them. He either believed this of me, or pretended that I wasn’t crazy in order to keep the peace in our marriage.I”ll never truly know which.
It was no surprise to me, then, that I felt John’s presence and heard him telling me that he was OK only hours after his death as we were driving home. In fact, he was rather annoying about it, telling me over and over and over again, “I’m Ok. I’m Ok. I’m Ok. I’m Ok.” It was actually very reassuring for both me and Anna. But, just like always, I had to tell him, “Enough! I hear you!”
Once we began to make funeral arrangements, I instantly worried about John’s urn. He wished to be cremated, and I planned to honor his wish. I remembered a day when both of us were sitting in a hospital room in Rochester, Minnesota. He was getting physical therapy. We talked about our plans for the next few years, how we would live with cancer and treatments and where we would take our first trip together in the camper once he stabilized. His physical therapy goal was to be able to safely climb the three steps into the camper. His cancer was in his knee, and the pain was often unbearable. Because he had been hospitalized and bedridden for several weeks, his muscles were weakened and he had to work hard to be able to climb a set of stairs. I went with him to therapy, learned how to hold the gait belt he wore around his waist for safety, learned where to stand and where to put my own feet and legs as he went up and came down the stairs. He had a few goals for his therapy. First, he wanted to go camping, and he needed to be able to safely get in and out of the camper. But another goal which he didn’t share with the therapists, was that he wanted to be able to get back into his wood shop in the basement of our home. This would require him to go down and up 13 steps. In rehab, he practiced going up and down seven steps and once he was able to do this, he said that with my help he should be able to get into his shop before Christmas. Then he would turn his own exotic wooden urn for his ashes.
“What the hell?” I asked him. “That’s creepy. You are NOT turning your own urn.”
“Why not? People make their own caskets, what’s the difference?” He asked. “Besides, that way I know that my urn is made from the wood that I want, not some basic piece of pine or oak.”
“Well, first of all, you have to get into the shop, and THEN you have to figure out how to turn an urn when you haven’t been able to make a bowl yet. I think you have plenty of time to figure that out.” I answered, and the conversation ended.
Now that we were thrown into the premature reality of planning his funeral, I had absolutely NO IDEA where I could find a wooden hand turned urn. And to find one that was also made of exotic wood seemed even more impossible. Two days later, the funeral director who was filling in for the owner gave me a brochure with examples of jewelry that I could purchase for my girls in memory of their dad. We took the brochure home and after looking at it, my daughter Anna suddenly put it in my hands and said, “You’re not going to believe this.” I looked at the inside of the back cover. Underneath the pictures of butterfly pendants was a half-page advertisement that read, “Our jeweler has recently developed a relationship with local artists who make hand turned wooden urns.” I sat down. Hard. John was leading us to his urn, but this wasn’t even the end of the story.
I went to the website where there were hundreds of urns to pick from and filtered the search to only include hardwoods that were stained dark. I intended to honor his wish to NOT be put into pine, oak, or “some other overused basic wood,” as he would say. The search resulted in about ten different urns. Looking at each one of them, one urn kept popping up as “the one” for me. Not sharing this choice with either of my older daughters, I asked them to pick the urn that they felt was the best. Each of us picked exactly the same urn! It just seemed to speak to each of us the same way. The urn was made out of tulip poplar. I knew nothing about this wood except that it was beautiful and that John must have led us to it.
When we met with the actual funeral director, I told him about the urn I wanted to order. He had never heard of the company. We explained that we had seen an advertisement for the company in the brochure for jewelry that the other director had given to us. He was stumped, telling us that that he had never seen this in the brochure, and he went to go find another copy. After looking for over five minutes, he came back and said that he could only find one brochure. He opened the brochure to the last page and showed us that there was nothing in it about the hand turned wooden urns. Then he quickly had a thought and bolted from the room. A few seconds later he handed me another brochure, “Is THIS is?” he asked. I quickly opened it to the inside back cover where the advertisement filled the lower half of the brochure page. He then told us that he would never have given us this brochure because they had recently been sent and he was using up the old ones first. He had no idea that this company was even listed in it, and he had no idea how the other director even found it to give it to us. It seemed that John truly picked out his own urn. The order was placed, and we continued with our plans.
A few days later, while shopping for clothes, my daughter Alicia suddenly sat down in the store and said, “Mamma. You HAVE to read this.” She had searched for information about the tulip poplar tree online and the description read something like this:
Tulip poplar is the tallest eastern hardwood tree. It grows quickly, but is a strong wood that is highly sought after. It is found in the eastern half of the United States and as far west as southern Illinois. The tulip poplar is one of the only shade trees that flowers. April marks the start of the flowering season in southern regions, while flowers begin to cultivate in June in the northern regions.
John was born in April. We were married on June 1, 1991. We now have no doubt that he led us to this urn. And that he is OK.
If you, or someone you care about is dealing with grief, here are some tips for coping with grief from people who are dealing with it themselves!
